


Sleight of Hand

by Argyle



Category: Dead Like Me
Genre: Gallows Humor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-13
Updated: 2007-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:17:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it takes a bit more than a short drop and a sudden stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleight of Hand

It had been a good week for Mason.  
  
On Monday, he found a Rolex on the pavement, right in front of him, clear as day. It was the sort of timepiece favored by investment tycoons and third world dictators, the sort that gave the hour in sixteen international capitals and could withstand a thousand feet of water pressure on the moon. He’d done his homework; he knew a good thing when he saw it. This one was undoubtedly worth hundreds, and he wasn’t shy about explaining that fact to the man at the pawnshop.  
  
“But in Seattle, it’s worth fifty dollars,” was the man’s tight-lipped reply.  
  
Mason had half a mind to hold on to it. He’d be able to impress others with his uncanny knack for time zones and keep his appointments with one dynamic swoop of his arm. But then again, he needed the money: if a wad of dirty bills couldn’t put food on the table and petrol in the tank, nothing could.  
  
And so he left it at this: “See you soon.”  
  
The man gave him a hard look; Mason smiled back. While he didn’t actually know whether or not that particular post-it would come round, he was technically correct: “soon” is one of those words that welcomes variance in interpretation. And anyway, one of the world’s myriad reapers would _eventually_ come to call. It happened to everyone.  
  
On Tuesday, Rube bought Banana Bonanzas all around.  
  
On Wednesday, Mason’s reap gave him a stack of Zombies LPs.  
  
On Thursday, Daisy invited him to the opening performance of her new one act play. (It was also the closing performance; the director had secured enough funding to rent to venue for exactly one night.) Of course, she’d only done so after taking a peek at his post-it to see if there would be a scheduling conflict for him. There was, and he missed seeing Daisy on stage, but she’d still asked him, which almost made him believe that it was in fact the thought that counted.  
  
The press filed the cast’s dramatic abilities under such phrases as, “Audaciously overreaching,” and, “Sly but forgettable,” with the occasional, “The leads are more elm and oak than Bogart and Bacall,” thrown in for good measure. George claimed to have enjoyed the show, and Roxy gave Daisy a dozen white lilies when it was all over. Rube said he hadn’t realized vaudeville was making a comeback.  
  
Now, on Friday, Mason was prepared to make history.  
  
He peered through the shattered window of an abandoned warehouse by the docks, shifting his weight every once in a while to get a better view of the goings on inside. Men in black leather jackets traded insults with other men in black leather jackets; then they traded briefcases of presumably unmarked currency. They were mobsters, certainly, though none looked quite like the sort of mobsters one saw at the cinema. It was disappointing that the family had so lowered its standards since Cagney’s reign of sullenness and lead poisoning.  
  
Mason checked his post-it: R. Panelli, ETD 3:13 PM.  
  
After one final glance through the window, he trotted round to the front of the warehouse. There were several large, surly-looking men keeping watch by the door, laughing and stroking their semi-automatics.  
  
“Hey Ralph, I hear you’re going to the Bahamas next month, strictly business. Bring me back a little something nice, would you?”  
  
“Fuck you, Vince,” Ralph chuckled. “You and Tommy’ll get what’s coming to you.”  
  
Mason cleared his throat. “Um. Hullo,” he said, feeling the weight of three sets of eyes on him. He hazarded a smile. “I’m with the International Express. I’ve a delivery for one... R. Panelli. Do you know where I might find him?”  
  
“What kind of delivery?” asked Ralph.  
  
“Dunno,” said Mason, tipping his non-existent cap. “Promise of confidentiality and all.”  
  
“Fine. I’m R. Panelli.”  
  
“Oh, good. If you could just sign here?”  
  
“You got something to write with?”  
  
“Um. Yes.” Mason pulled a leaky pen from his pocket and pointed to the signature line on his tablet. “Just here, please.”  
  
Ralph signed his name with flourish and skill. Then he glanced back to Mason. “Well?”  
  
“Thanks. I appreciate your time.”  
  
“What about my delivery?”  
  
“Delivery. Right. My truck’s out back. If I could just bring it round, and then--”  
  
“You want I should come with you?”  
  
“Ralph, wait a second,” Tommy broke in. “Mr. Caruso told us to stay put.”  
  
“Mr. Caruso’s busy. Or can’t you two handle this on your own while I’m gone?”  
  
“Sure, Ralph,” Vince said smoothly. “We’ll be fine.”  
  
“No, no. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just be a moment. International Express prides itself on full service delivery, you know,” said Mason, extending his hand. When Ralph shook it, Mason took his soul. And then he said: “Thanks.”  
  
Without a backward glance, Mason trotted around to the rear of the warehouse. He sat down on an overturned crate, tapping his palms against his thighs as he waited.  
  
The shots began within a minute: a few at first, each echoing against the warehouse’s high ceiling like a cork popped from a champagne bottle, and then there came a cascade until the shouts were all but drowned out. There was the sound of heavy footfall, of barked orders and tires pouring across the asphalt.  
  
Mason found the former R. Panelli standing over his corpse. “Was I the only one to go?” he asked, not looking up.  
  
“You were,” said Mason.  
  
“Somehow I thought there’d be more.”  
  
“More?”  
  
“Chances.”  
  
And then R. Panelli vanished in a motorcade of blue light. Mason watched the sky close up behind him. A neat breeze picked up from the west, and it tousled the hair about his temples; he tightened his scarf. Everyone had fled.  
  
Just as he turned to go, something fluttered out from the door, rising up and skipping against the pavement before landing squarely between his feet: a hundred dollar bank note. He picked it up and checked for the watermark.  
  
“Fuck me,” he said wonderingly. “ _Fuck me_.”  
  
There were more inside the warehouse; thousands more.  
  
Mason leapt about wildly, pushing bills into his pockets, and when his pockets were bursting, he scoured the floor for a piece of cardboard with which to create a makeshift satchel. When the satchel was full, he hugged it to his chest and rocked back on his heels. Why, it was enough to retire with. Maybe Rube would give him some time off so that he could go on holiday, back to England, or better yet, to the Caribbean. Maybe he could arrange to relocate the whole group: it would be smooth sailing and sex on the beach and drinks with miniature umbrellas in for all of them. Reaping wouldn’t be so bad in a place like that...  
  
But before he could finish his thought, he heard a cough, and then a cold metallic click. Vince and Tommy were standing behind him, each with a gun pointed at Mason’s head.  
  
“Hi,” he managed. “Hullo.”  
  
Vince took a long stride forward. “Delivering that package, eh?”  
  
“Just getting to it, yes. Um. In fact, it’s right out there. But then I saw your fallen compatriot... and these here.” Mason swallowed audibly. “Didn’t want the wind to blow it all away.”  
  
“Is that so?” Tommy asked. He and Vince shared a glance, and then adjusted their aims.  
  
There wasn’t so much a bang as a whirr.  
  
“Not a bit like Cagney,” Mason said before the world went dark.  
  


\------------------------------

  
  
Rube sighed and set his coffee down. “I’ll try one more time,” he said. “Daisy, my generosity in repeating this is for your benefit, so you’d best sit tight.”  
  
“ _My_ benefit?” Daisy echoed, pocketing her compact. “Look, I don’t know how it was for you growing up, but when one asks to be excused, the other people at the table are usually _tactful_ enough to allow it. I have an appointment in twenty-five minutes. As you know, if I miss that appointment--”  
  
“And if we do not settle this now, at this moment, there will be untold havoc unleashed upon each and every one of us. Including you, Daisy. Especially you.”  
  
Daisy smiled sweetly. “You’re the boss.”  
  
“Thank you.” Rube rubbed the tender flesh between his eyes before continuing, “I’ll ask again. Does anyone know where Mason is?”  
  
“No,” Daisy chirped.  
  
Roxy shook her head distractedly. “He hasn’t been around since he left for his reap yesterday,” she said. “Now, seeing as I’m a _realistic_ officer, I’ll first recommend you give him at least another day before sending out the search parties. Before then, I sure as hell don’t want to be sitting here, listening to you three shit bricks over this. He’s probably face down in a ditch somewhere. Let it go.”  
  
“Roxy has a point. What if he’s--”  
  
“What if he’s gone?” George broke in. She glanced between them, from Roxy to Daisy, and finally to Rube. There was annoyance and exhaustion in her expression; there was also worry. “Really gone, I mean. Like Betty.”  
  
Rube tried -- and failed -- to hide his scowl. “Don’t start, peanut. It doesn’t work that way.”  
  
“What’re you talking about? It worked for _her_. I was there. I _saw_ it happen.”  
  
“We don’t know that,” said Roxy.  
  
“That’s right. We don’t know that. What we do know is that Mason is MIA, and that there’s a post-it waiting for him.” Rube drummed his fingertips on the tabletop. One by one, the other reapers slipped from the booth and out the door.  
  
Roxy was the last to go. “You want me to start up that search party?” she asked, straightening her holster as she stood. “I could bring him down to the station, teach him a thing or two about responsibility. Bet he’d make a few friends along the way.”  
  
Rube shook his head. “We’ll give him a day.”  
  
“And then?”  
  
“And then we can begin to be concerned.”  
  
“People don’t just disappear, Rube. He’s got to be somewhere.”  
  
“Right,” Rube said, not meaning it. If there was one thing he had learned in all his long years, it was that people did in fact disappear. They did it all the time, and no amount of post-its could summon them back.  
  
When she had gone, he slowly finished his coffee. Then he picked up his hat and jacket, and made his way outside. Though the air was still shaking off the last barbs of winter, the sun was warm on his face.  
  
Before the hour was up, he’d taken two souls, and by lunchtime, he arrived at the site of Mason’s last reap.  
  
By the look of it, the warehouse had been abandoned for years: most of the windows were either cracked or completely missing, the tin roof was rusted through, and a wide assortment of weeds clung to the soiled walls. The front door was bolted shut. The grounds were completely still.  
  
Rube pulled his metal detector, the bequeathal of one Walt Farrar (1929-1995), from the bed of his truck, clicked the on-switch, and swiftly swept it over the ground. After a moment, he began to methodically survey the parking lot, where he found fifteen nickels; the long planks of tarred wood which had been laid before the wharf, where he found a few tarnished soda tabs; and the sidewalk surrounding the warehouse, where he found nothing but bottle glass and reeds.  
  
There was no sign of Mason. Now, it certainly wasn’t the kid’s style to leave a note or a set of coordinates. It wasn’t even his style to follow any direction other than the one the wind tossed him in. But Rube had somehow assumed -- foolishly, he knew -- that in the end, Mason would always turn up on the doorstep, miraculously unharmed.  
  
He stood leaning against his truck, his breakfast still heavy in his stomach. He told himself this: you can’t keep track of them all the time. For all of this to work, it’s necessary that they uphold their end of the bargain. Simple as cake.  
  
And yet two reapers had gone missing on his watch within as many years. Somehow the thought of a replacement for Mason seemed worse than the actuality of Mason himself.  
  
“You’ve fucked up for the last time,” Rube murmured, and pulled his keys from his pocket.  
  
It was only as he began to drive away that he saw the graves.  
  
Of course, they weren’t proper graves. There weren’t headstones or flowers. But atop each three by seven parcel there was a peculiar consistency of overturned soil: not quite tilled, though close enough, and darker than the sandy variety which surrounded it. A normal person would have gone past without a second thought, unaware and above suspicion.  
  
Fortunately, Rube wasn’t a normal person; he’d made a lengthy career out of noticing things. And fortunately, he’d brought a shovel.  
  
Two graves, one post-it.  
  
He took a deep breath and picked the left-hand plot.  
  
It wasn’t the digging that tired him, but rather the possibility that Mason was frisking about somewhere, inebriated and unburdened, while Rube exhumed some poor sot.  
  
Then he hit the lid of a pitch pine coffin with the tip of the shovel. It wasn’t quite six feet down, though he still struggled to slide to the bottom to kneel beside it, and the nails refused to pull free without a stroke-inducing bout of exertion.  
  
There was a creak and a groan.  
  
The creak was the coffin; the groan was its occupant.  
  
“My God,” Mason coughed, and blinked back the sun. His face was caked with dirt, and beneath it there grew a two day beard in spite of it having only been one. “My God. It’s finally happened. You’ve finally arrived. Is this where I ascend into Heaven?”  
  
“Not quite.”  
  
Mason frowned. “I suppose there won’t be a chariot and banshees, then.”  
  
“No,” said Rube, clapping dirt from his hands. He didn’t allow himself to smile, for if he felt something at the sight of Mason, it couldn’t be defined as relief. “And nor will there be waffles, if I have anything to say about it. What the fuck did you think you were doing getting caught like this? Does discretion not mean anything to you?”  
  
“Discretion? Er, is that what one puts on ham and cheese sandwiches? Mild discretion, honey discretion, extra spicy Thai-style discretion, discretion with garlic in...”  
  
As Rube opened his mouth to reply, a shadow passed over the grave. Two large, leather-clad men stared down at them, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.  
  
“Afternoon,” said Rube. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”  
  


* * *

  
  
He came to several hours later.  
  
At least he supposed it was several hours later.  
  
Everything was shrouded in darkness, and the air had a still, stale quality which invoked nothing if not the half-forgotten catacomb of some long vanished sect. His head pounded, and he suddenly regretted that last cup of coffee at Der Waffle Haus.  
  
Then he remembered.  
  
“Oh, shit.”  
  
“Kind of you drop by,” Mason chuckled glumly. “I wondered whether you’d ever wake up. That brain injury looked pretty serious. Got a bit of it on my clothes, as a matter of fact, and that kind of thing doesn’t just wash out with soap and water.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“I gather they saw us.”  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I can’t move my arms,” said Rube. But he could move his fingers, which he did quite urgently: here was something soft and warm directly beneath him, gently shifting and covered in cloth.  
  
“Watch it!” Mason shifted, taking Rube with him. “I’d just got comfortable.”  
  
Rube allowed himself the luxury of a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. He was in the coffin with Mason. It wasn’t so bad, except for the part where he was in the coffin with Mason. That part was really fucking horrendous. He screwed his eyes shut as he continued, “Okay. They saw us. Do you know anything else?”  
  
“Not really. They got me a moment later. You should’ve seen their faces! Thought they’d walked into one of those films where the people are trapped in a shopping mall while the living dead have free reign over the city, and then it’s all, ‘Grr! Arg!’ until the sun comes up. If they know what’s good for them, they’ll be round with a priest to sanctify the place.”  
  
“Mason?”  
  
“Yes, Rube?”  
  
“Would you kindly shut the fuck up? I can’t even hear myself think.”  
  
Mason shifted again, but didn’t speak; Rube could feel his heartbeat.  
  
Before them loomed a great bank of uncertainty, dark as any thunderhead and just as daunting. If they both kicked up and out at the same time, he thought, maybe they could jostle the lid free. But then again, they’d still have to reckon with several feet of turned soil afterwards.  
  
“Okay. So what if we make ourselves _quite_ heavy? You know, so that the coffin will sink through the earth, and then we could eventually just find an underground river or something. I’d fancy a trip to Brazil.”  
  
Rube didn’t reply at first, realizing that several feet of turned soil was a small price to pay. Hell, a thousand feet of turned soil was a small price to pay, affronted as he was with Mason’s grime and Mason’s words and the low, damp stench of Mason’s leather jacket. He sighed, “Do you know what time it is?”  
  
“No. I had a watch... and then I sold it.”  
  
“Beautiful.”  
  
“Well, yeah. But the gent at the pawnshop only gave me fifty dollars for it. A Rolex, you know? Cheap bastard.” There was a long pause, and then: “Rube?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“How did you know which grave was mine?”  
  
“I looked at them and asked myself which would accompany the epitaph ‘So Goeth a Fuck Up.’ Didn’t take long.”  
  
“But the other guy was a blood-thirsty mobster!”  
  
“I rest my case.”  
  
“He probably ate small children for breakfast.”  
  
“And you got us here. See, Mason? You live and you learn, and sometimes it takes a while for the learning to catch up with the living. It’s all about making choices appropriate to one’s goals.”  
  
“Are we ever going to get out of here?”  
  
“Roxy said she’d send out a search party after another day or two.”  
  
“But now you’ve gone missing, too! Surely someone will notice.”  
  
Rube shook his head, instantly regretting it. A shard of white light seared a path from his temples to the back of his skull where his hair lay heavy and damp with blood. “She said a day or two.”  
  
“I can’t wait here a day or two! _I can’t wait here a day or two._ Think about it. Think about all the people I’ll let down. Daisy’ll be in hysterics before long. Rube, you’ve got to do something.”  
  
“Calm down.”  
  
Mason hissed in a breath. “Well?”  
  
“Have you ever played cards?”  
  
“You mean like spit or rummy or something?”  
  
“The game is immaterial,” said Rube. “What matters is that it’s played with cards.”  
  
“Sure. I once ran away from home. Must’ve been about ten or so. Spent the night by a car park with a couple of mates from school, eating chocolate and drinking the peppermint schnapps old Sammy Samsonite lifted off his grandmother. We tried to make a fire to keep ourselves warm, lighting cereal packages and any old rubbish we could find--”  
  
“The thing about having a captive audience, I’ve found, is that one must choose one’s words carefully. Otherwise one’s presence can become taxing.”  
  
“Okay. But you know, we played cards all night. Damn well nearly froze our balls off by morning,” Mason muttered. “Mum made me go to school the next day anyway.”  
  
“Wise woman.”  
  
“Protestant, actually. Isn’t there something people say about that? You know: something something something leads to a well-adjusted life.”  
  
“May I have a moment of your time?”  
  
Rube felt Mason’s hair against his cheek as he nodded.  
  
“Thank you. Now, if you’ve ever played cards -- and by your previous digression, I’ll assume you have -- there are several things you come to realize,” said Rube. “One: never let the other players see your hand. Otherwise you risk giving the game away too early. Do you follow me?”  
  
“Yes. I mean, no.” Mason paused. “I mean, they saw our hand, didn’t they?”  
  
“They saw _your_ hand, Mason, and by proxy they saw mine. Two: be prepared to bluff. To up the ante. To throw the other players for a loop.”  
  
“Throw the other players for a loop.”  
  
“Three: keep an ace up your sleeve. Just in case you bet out of your league.”  
  
“And this relates to our present situation how, exactly?”  
  
“There’s a Swiss Army knife in my right pocket,” Rube said sullenly.  
  
“You’re joking, right? I mean, really Rube, this bloody well isn’t the best time to be funny.”  
  
“My right pocket.”  
  
Mason began to laugh, and the sound of it was low and miserable. Rube waited for him to shift, slightly left, and then slightly right, until he had enough room to reach for the knife. He felt the scrabbling of Mason’s fingertips against his thigh. Then Mason shifted again.  
  
“Got it,” he said. And then: “Why’d it take you so long to mention this?”  
  
“Call it oxygen deprivation and we’ll call it even.” And this was true: the air grew thinner with every breath, and it felt sharper for the chill which rose up to greet them from the surrounding earth. Rube never realized how little insulation the dead were afforded. For several seconds, he blinked into the darkness, and then continued, “You’ll have to reach around me if you can. Pry at the lid and force it free. If we’re lucky, they’re worse carpenters than they are miscreants.”  
  
“Do you believe in luck?”  
  
“Just pry the fucking lid, Mason.”  
  
Rube heard the clank of the guard being removed, and the click of the knife swinging free. Mason’s teeth were chattering slightly as he spoke: “So I suppose this once belonged to your great-uncle Edgar, eh?”  
  
“Great-aunt Ethel, actually.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“No. I bought it in a pawnshop downtown.”  
  
“Was it the one on Carlisle? Because that’s where I sold my watch.”  
  
“Mason?”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
A long moment passed, and then another.  
  
Rube held his breath as Mason wedged the knife between the coffin’s lid and sidewall.  
  


\------------------------------

  
  
The one thing about freshly turned soil, Mason was surprised to find, was that it was just as difficult to move through as any other sort of soil.  
  
This wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Mason had woken up in his own fair share of ruts, ditches, and assorted arroyos over the years, had even been halfway buried from time to time, but this ranked near the top of the rogue’s gallery of bollocksy scenarios.  
  
It took no less than an hour and a half by Mason’s reckoning (and double that by Rube’s) to pull the coffin’s lid back from its base. The result of their efforts was a jagged array of splintering wood, and when coupled with four inch long nails, the whole thing amounted to a rather hazardous work environment; Rube told him to keep his mouth shut as he began his ascent. Mason wasn’t far behind.  
  
Now, somewhere between the wrecked coffin and the surface, Mason gagged on dirt and imagined all the little crawly things whose homes he had invaded. Worms, centipedes, millipedes, ants and slugs and prehistoric winged beasts. It was enough to make him give up late night television, though not enough to keep him from thinking of all the late night television he’d seen in the past.  
  
He wondered whether there was a method to it, a proven strategy for clawing through the earth. What strange Carpathian secrets had Christopher Lee known when he rose from the grave just in time to save his own habitually photosensitive skin?  
  
And when Mason felt a sudden grip fasten round his forearm, all he could think was this: Oh, _fuck_.  
  
The grip was insistent, pulling him up and up until he lay sprawled on the bare ground. There were stars overhead, but directly before him streamed the glare of the sun.  
  
“What?” Mason mumbled, and lazily rolled onto his belly. “What?”  
  
“Sounds like this little ordeal’s improved your vocabulary.”  
  
“Roxy?”  
  
“You’d better get up,” Roxy replied, brushing dirt from her hands. Then she glanced over her shoulder to where Rube stood leaning against her squad car, a blanket round his shoulders and a thermos in his hands.  
  
“Do as the lady says,” he murmured around the lip of his cup.  
  
“Nngh.” Mason rubbed at his face, blinking rapidly into the gleam which was not the sun, but rather the car’s headlights on high. Then he sat up. “Neck’s sore.”  
  
“That won’t be the only thing that’s sore if you don’t get your dumb ass up,” Roxy said.  
  
“Arms’re sore, legs’re sore, back’s sore.”  
  
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Rube.  
  
Mason shrugged, and felt his muscles well up in pain. “That too.”  
  
Eventually he stood, and eventually he managed to dust himself off. There was still the matter of the blood stains, but he was more than willing to momentarily forgo the thought.  
  
Rube and Roxy stood together in the headlights. Mason heard her say, “Truck,” and, “Impoundment lot.” Rube didn’t look pleased.  
  
When Mason joined them, their conversation skidded to a halt. “Um,” he said.  
  
Rube glanced up and down, the soot on his brow exaggerating his frown. He handed Mason the thermos. “Roxy was just telling me how--”  
  
“Shots were reported fired in the area,” she broke in. “I was just making a routine follow-up.”  
  
“Not exactly routine, was it?” Mason said between sips. The coffee was bitter, but hot, and he was grateful for the sensation of warmth it left in his stomach.  
  
Roxy narrowed her eyes. “You’d be surprised.”  
  
“But there were mobsters! I think they were conducting some sort of money laundering operation.”  
  
“Save it for the report.”  
  
“You’re not serious, are you?” Mason looked over to Rube. “She’s not serious?”  
  
“That’s for her to decide. Now, I think it would be best if we got out of here,” Rube said, letting the blanket slip from his shoulders. Then he tossed it to Mason.  
  
“What’s this for?”  
  
“Aren’t you cold?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“Then spread it out over the back seat,” said Roxy. “I don’t want you getting that shit you’re covered in on the upholstery.”  
  
“I’m not sitting in the back again! And besides, he’s dirtier than I am.”  
  
Without another word, Roxy slipped into the car, and Rube slid in beside her.  
  
Mason pushed the blanket over the bench. “Fucking hell,” he grumbled. “Spend the night in a fucking grave and this is all the thanks I get.”  
  
“ _Thanks?_ ” Roxy repeated incredulously as she revved the engine. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to get yourself buried in the first place. Shit, what was that? Gunshot wound to the frontal lobe?”  
  
“ _Two_ gunshot wounds,” Mason corrected her. “They were mobsters.”  
  
“Oh yeah? Well, let me make you an offer you can’t refuse,” said Roxy. “Shut the fuck up before it’s three.”  
  
“I don’t get it.”  
  
“Just drive, Roxy,” Rube said placidly.  
  
And so they did. For a time, the warehouse was visible through the back window, its angles illuminated by the fickle starlight and the occasional reflection from the water, and then it was as lost in darkness as all the land which surrounded it.  
  
The car was silent but for the wheels rolling over the rough gravel road, and the _tick-tick-tack_ of the heater working overtime. Then Mason began rifling through his pockets until he found Rube’s knife. “Hey Rube,” he said, slipping it through the grill. “Here’s this back.”  
  
Rube didn’t turn round. Rather, he glanced in the rearview mirror, arched a brow, and shook his head. “Keep it.”  
  
“Really? I mean, I’d hate to deprive you of valuable family heirlooms.”  
  
“I told you: it’s from a shop downtown.”  
  
“Right,” said Mason. The knife felt heavy in his hands as he flicked open the various tools: tweezers, file, miniature scissors. “Aren’t these things supposed to have bottle openers?”  
  
Roxy laughed shortly. “That’s what your teeth are for.”  
  
“Right,” Mason said again, snapping the knife shut and plunging it back into his pocket. Then he felt something strange. Of course, it wasn’t _actually_ strange, but instead unexpected. It was crisp and firm and wholly familiar. It was a folded stack of hundred dollar bills. “Christ,” he murmured and counted them. There were twenty. “Christly Christ, I can’t believe it.”  
  
“Sounds like Mason’s been saved,” Roxy murmured wryly.  
  
“Twice in one day,” said Rube. “Give the kid a fucking medal.”  
  
And Mason flipped the bills between his thumb and forefinger, relishing the sweet snap of paper edges against paper edges. “An ace up my sleeve, Rube,” he said wonderingly. “That’s what you said. You said it, and you were right.”  
  
Roxy and Rube shared a glance.  
  
“God, I’m famished,” Mason laughed abruptly. “Who wants breakfast?”  
  
“Who’s paying? You?” Roxy asked.  
  
“Well... Just this time. You know, by way of thanks. Rube?”  
  
Rube sighed deeply. “I am afraid I’ve had enough excitement for one night.”  
  
“I’ll drop you off at home,” said Roxy. She tapped her fingertips on the steering wheel. “Mason, forget it.”  
  
“Fine. What I give I can just as easily take away,” Mason huffed. “If Kiffany’s still around, I’ll buy _her_ breakfast.”  
  
“What’s with the sudden altruism?”  
  
But Mason didn’t reply. At the first red light, he pushed on the door and hopped out onto the pavement. Roxy called after him, but made no move to follow; the light turned, and Rube stared out at the street ahead, not quite smiling as the car shifted forward.  
  
Then they were gone. Mason checked himself in the faint reflection of a shop window. Dirty face, dirty shoes, filthy jacket. If he were quite truthful with himself, he would have to admit he was in need of a haircut.  
  
“Tomorrow,” he said, and hazarded a guess at the whereabouts of Der Waffle Haus.


End file.
